


May I Remind You?

by TheFaerieChild



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Affairs, Angst, Blood, Cheating, Death, F/M, Hurt, Implied Sexual Content, Love, Mild Gore, Miscarriage, Multi, Murder, Other, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12847158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFaerieChild/pseuds/TheFaerieChild
Summary: Millicent Wellington was living the perfect life in Tenpenny Tower--she had her girl friends, she had her book club, and she had her husband. But then that damned letter fell into her lap... it couldn't possibly be his handwriting--! Could it? (Color play, yay! One-shot, mentions of sex, implied F!LW/Butch DeLoria)





	May I Remind You?

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey all! Welcome to the revision of my 2011 one-shot, "May I Remind You?" I've always been meaning to fix this thing up. It was my first ever one-shot, the first thing I ever posted in way of fanfiction, and I was always kind of proud of it because it involved kind of "niche" characters. This unnamed quest while in Tenpenny Towers was always one of my favorites—mainly because I was tootling around trying to find shit to steal, and trying to find Susan Lancaster because of the Tenpenny Tower quest, when I happened across the love letter in her room... and then proceeded to give it to Millicent Wellington.
> 
> And from that incident, was "May I Remind You?" born! (I actually high-key hate both Millicent and Lancaster, which is why I loved this quest—I got rid of the two without really doing much at all!)
> 
> So here's my take on the unnamed side quest! Changed up a few things... and there's a bit of a twist at the end, so stick around for it! F!LW Claudia Price followed by her loud-mouthed companion, Butch DeLoria! Yay~! (Because this dork doesn't get enough love, honestly)
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the read, and be sure to leave a review if you did! And be sure to check out my other work, my profile features more one-shots and a multi-chaptered story centered around a female inventor LW and Butch DeLoria! This story will also be posted on my FF.Net account under "TheKonfessionist" and on my DA under "CheapGrotesqueries". If you see this fic posted anywhere but these three websites, under any other usernames but these three, PLEASE NOTIFY ONE OF THE LISTED ACCOUNTS! That means my work was stolen! The artwork for the picture is also not mine (it's Ada Wong LOL), I only did the edits for the cover image.
> 
> Happy reading, happy writing
> 
> ~Konfessionist, signing out

* * *

" _I'm sorry._ " Claudia spoke with a concerned furrow between her sharp, painted black eyebrows. " _But I thought you deserved to know—_ "

The outsider woman's voice was so far away now, unintelligible and warbling in and out of Millicent Wellington's hearing. All she heard was ringing filling her ears, the kind that came when you were shattering into splintered pieces like porcelain plates bombarding kitchen tiles, and she was suddenly submerged under a dark, numbing wave. It threatened to swallow her down into cold depths long before she had the evidence.

The crash of the tide was coming long before she had the letter in hand, that told her she  _ _wasn't__ insane, or paranoid, or thinking awful, unfounded thoughts about her husband. It wasn't just all in her head.

The damn letter in her hands was neatly folded with such care it was practically cutting her just looking at it. The unsoiled paper smelled like His aftershave and the guarding red seal that marked the mouth of the letter was split open. The intricate detailing held an elegantly curled  ** _ **EW**_**   with a crest of olive leaves encircling the letters like a noose brushed with gold paint. She knew the sigil well, down to every curl of leaf and vine amidst the spill of red ( _ _she's__ seeing red now!), as it was from a family heirloom that was passed down through generations of Wellingtons to her husband.

Her damnable, wonderful ( _ _red__ ), lecherous, charming ( ** _ **red**_** ), adulterous, romantic ( ** _ **RED**_** ), bastard of a husband!

"What—...?" She began quietly with the red starting to seethe into everything around her. It pulsed in her ears, it blushed her cheeks, it turned the beautifully crafted words within the letter a stark and condemning crimson, tainting the dark water to swarm the sharks. Everything was painted red—slowly— _ _surely—__ ** _ **red**_** **.** There were the distant words of the sacred oath they took upon their wedding day and all she could picture was His jubilant expression as He slipped the band onto her finger to crown her engagement ring.

He later told her He spent  _ _months__ having traders scavenge for rings that were to His  _ _exact__ specifications.

It was gold with a small red jewel, framed by two smaller diamonds.

Edgar always told her the two diamonds represented the two of them, and the red jewel signified their love.

"I found this in Lancaster's room." Claudia answered. "I—... I'm sorry, but I read it. I thought you deserved to know."

This outsider—this woman that dropped herself into Tenpenny Towers only a handful of days beforehand—was now in Millicent's doorway with a pitiful look in her face. She  _ _hated__ when people looked at her like that! Like she was pathetic—

And doe-eyed.

And small.

And weak.

__And still stupidly in love with this man._ _

"What's the  _ _meaning__  of this?" She finally managed to speak but her mouth was so prickly and dry, and all she could do was continuously read over the incriminating words; she knew the handwriting like a second language, like it was pure scripture—the sharp curve of His 'S', the flecking dash over His lowercase 'I' instead of a peck of a dot, the swooping tail that concluded His 'Y'...

This was  _ _her__ scripture, and it was being lovingly gifted to someone  _ _much__ less deserving **.**

"Your husband seems to be in love with her..." Claudia explained, shifting her weight between dusty boots and her gloved hands somersaulted over each other.

"This isn't real," Millicent was only taking in the murky water she was drowning in. There wasn't any air in her lungs, just the tears she tried to swallow back over the last couple of years with a smile, when she  _ _knew__ He was acting differently; she  _ _knew__ something was changing, it was changing in all the alarming ways, but instead of addressing Him like a fierce woman, she stood by His side quietly like a blindly doting wife. She wanted to believe more than anything that this letter couldn't be His, that it was all one grand mistake—and that this handwriting that once constructed beautiful cathedrals for her, wasn't painting the landscape for the cathedral to sit upon for another woman.

A woman that was fiercer, more passionate, and more unafraid than she could ever make herself to be.

Millicent wasn't going to cry—how could she even  _ _think__ about placating the scolding voice in her head, telling her to be polite and keep her composure like that  _ _doting wife__  in front of guests, and to offer them a seat inside and a cup of coffee?—she swallowed down those tears, too. They found company in the dark water swelling her lungs where she tried to sink all her other regrets, tied to rocks after being cocooned in red satin and released with an apologetic kiss. The accusatory words she always wanted to bring to light sat curdled and spoiled in the barrens that was her stomach... where only His garden of flowers could grow amongst the dry, broken weeds. She was nothing but a cooing, starry-eyed girl before Edgar, and her mother always told her He'd make her into a proper young woman... but really, she was still that same girl—only now with a lake in her chest, inside a body that couldn't give Him the son He always desperately wanted.

Tenpenny Tower, in her eyes, was the safest of places out in the wasteland. It's solid walls were patrolled by well-equipped guards, keeping out the threat of the wastes, and tucking their luxury safe inside; but even an armored man with a gun couldn't protect you from the threats that lingered in your own head. She fell victim to the comfort in her sewing circle, her book club, in discussing the latest scandals over hot coffee with the girls— _ _she__  was going to be the newest gossip amongst her girl friends at tomorrow's brunch, she realized in a passive thought, and she was suddenly seized by panic. What would they say? Would they sit without her, order their meals, and laugh behind hands curtaining amused smiles? Would they condemn only her for being a broken wife and not  _ _him__  for being a philandering husband?

The solid walls, the safety, and the luxury meant  _ _nothing__ in a world that He wouldn't be apart of  _ _with__ her. She didn't want to have it without him.

"...Do you wanna be left alone?"

"Please." Millicent crumpled the letter against her chest in two hands, practically wringing it within tightening knuckles. "...If you see Edgar—tell him to come home. It's an emergency." Her voice trembled as much as her body did. She couldn't hide the sorrow, or the rage, or the betrayal that was flaying itself from her.

Claudia left after a pitiful " _ _I'm sorry,__ " tumbled from her mouth and she pulled the door shut behind her.

Millicent was left standing in the front hall of the apartment. There was the metallic  _ _tick, tick, tick,__  of the wall clock in the kitchen. There was the thrumming of her heart in her ears, slowly quelling itself to a numbed sound. There were her eyes gleaning the paint from every word that made the landscape for Susan Lancaster.

She dropped the letter to the floor with a resolved sigh, letting it sink in the lake like all the times she wanted to say she loved Him though He wouldn't say it back, like all the times she drank when He wasn't home because the night before He refused to make love to her and she wondered if He saw Susan before coming home—like all the times she cried behind closed doors only to herself for His babies that she lost— _Robert, Lucille, Gregory, John, Francesca—_

The water was starting to wash out with the tide and slowly, but surely, her head was buoyed above water; it was the sweetest first breath she was able to take in a  _very_ long time. This wasn't another thing she was going to sink into her lake with the rest of her regrets and her mistakes.

To let her husband get away with his infidelity broke their sacred promise... and he was going to pay for it— _ _dearly__ _—_ with lots and  _ _lots__ of  ** _ **red.**_**

* * *

"Darling, I'm home!" Edgar Wellington entered his apartment with his suit jacket hooked over his shoulder by a single finger, and there was a lock of hair out of place that he consciously left hanging in his face. He wasn't ever this dressed down in public, as he was  _ _very__ particular about his image in front of his neighbors, but damn it all, he just got back from a swell night with Susan! Every moment with her was as if he were rediscovering passionate, forever love all over again. She riled his thoughts at every moment he was away from her, and Edgar found even the most idle of things to remind him of something about her.

For the longest time, he felt as if everything in his life was turning to gray... Millicent, more and more, was showing less interest in him, almost as if she were cautious—unwilling to touch him, shunning any of his affectionate advances. They were still unable to have a child and nothing Dr. Bannfield suggested to them was working in conceiving and keeping the baby. Work amidst the tower was a tiresome dribble that flooded the moments when he wasn't with his wife, and even that was turning gray—borderline black, even.

But then... one night Susan Lancaster sat beside him in the Federalist's Lounge, and all she had to do was lay a hand over his, in the midst of a mildly crude joke ushered from him in his liquored state, her head thrown back in twinkling laughter, and he was hers  _ _completely__ _._

"Oh, you wouldn't be _ _lieve__ the things I heard from Lydia Montenegro today! It's absolutely  _ _ludicrous!__ " He hung his suit jacket on the hat rack beside the door, laughing jovially. _"_ Do you recall that pierced up  _ _spectacle__  with that leather-clad, knuckle-dragging  _ _boyfriend__ of hers that showed up a few days ago? She's trying to  _ _help__  those retched ghouls get into Tenpenny Tower!  _ _She's a__ _ _ **zombie lover!**__ Can you imagine—?"

" _ _No...__ " Came as an impassively drab response. " _ _I can't.__ "

"Millie, sweetheart, why're all the lights off?" He asked as he peered into the apartment, finally noticing the room—save for the hallway where he stood, under a single ceiling light—was pitch  _ _black__. His hand found the nearby light switch and he clicked it on.

Millicent was sitting at the dining table with a bottle of scotch in one hand, nearly slumped over it with the decanter hanging delicately from her fingers. It was like it was on a fingernail's edge of slipping from her grip and dropping. Her back was mostly facing him and her chestnut curls were wild, tangled and unstyled, and her stockinged feet were free of her shoes. They were strewn haphazardly on the way into the kitchen where the liquor cabinet was open.

"Because I  _ _turned them off,__ ** _ **dear.**_** " She spat with a sharp acidicness and took a firm enough hold on the scotch to carry it to her mouth, taking a burning chug of it. "...I'm sorry. I don't have dinner ready for you. I was busy with other things."

"Millicent, what're you doing? Is that my good scotch?" Edgar flew over and pried it from her hand with a condescending tone, finding her grip to be startlingly strong but he managed to retrieve it. He knew this bottle was sealed, he was saving it as a gift for Susan! "You couldn't even bother with a  _ _glass...__ " He muttered disappointedly. There were other bottles open already, why did she have to pick  _ _this__ one?

When he set the bottle down on the table to recork it, he froze upon seeing a crumpled letter between Millicent's draped out arms, with her wedding band and engagement ring sitting a top it. Other letters were beside the one, unfolded, drafts of his prior attempts at love letters to Susan; he thought he threw them out. But, he suddenly remembered shoving them frantically into his bottom most desk drawer when Millicent swept over, asking if he'd like to go to dinner together instead of staying in.

Condemned words written in the throws of the lust riddling his veins boldly made home beside a black, gleaming gun.

"You know what  _ _I__ heard from our  _ _zombie lover__  today, Edgar?" She asked in a voice that was clear despite how much she obviously drank. Her eyes were glassy, bloodshot, and bloated between the liquor and her tears. Most of her make up was smeared off and wiped away in a red trim embroidered handkerchief in her opposite hand... a gift from him on their 8th anniversary.

"Tha- That those damned ghouls are 'people' too—?" He replied hopefully but all his attention was trained on the gun. How did she get his safe open? He never told her the combination. "The sun's fried her brain... or perhaps she was peddling about in a radiation pocket—impaired her ability to think... Mi- Millicent, how did you get my gun?"

"She told me that you're in love with Susan Lancaster," His wife ignored him with a laugh, and it was hollow in the kind of way that made his blood run cold when her hand, with her handkerchief, brushed the gun on the table. She looked up at him with a smile so wide it could have cradled her eyes. "My God, you think you are, don't you?"

"Mi- Millie, I can explain—"

"Your letter did all the work for you, my love." Her free hand found his cheek and there was an almost loving touch to her glassy stare. He leaned into her touch apologetically. "I wonder if she believed you... or if she laughed when she opened your letter. You sound like a giddy schoolboy in it, with a crush on the prettiest girl in class. You fucked her, didn't you? You fucked her and then crawled into bed with me... am I infected with something from her, Edgar? Something she brought in from out there? Everyone knows she's from Paradise Falls, and we can only  _ _imagine__ how slavers treat their women... you say you love her, yet she makes you pay for it. How much? How much did you pay her? Was it worth it for every time you stuck your  _ _cock__ in her?"

"Millie—!"

Her hand upon his face withdrew and she slapped him.  ** _ **Hard.**_** He saw black before it was immediately exploding with stars.

" _ _Don't call me that.__ " She tutted with a dark kind of calmness and he gaped at her, mortified. Her eyes had a looming blackness, like a storm cracking with lightning strikes, drawing closer and closer to the surface. His wife was becoming darker, and someone else, right before his eyes. "You can't have it any longer, I won't let you have  _ _anything__ of me anymore!... I've given so much of myself to you, I've left nothing for  _ _me__ _._ "

Edgar put a hand to his stinging cheek as he cowered back from her. "Millicent, I—! I'm so, so sorry! I didn't mean for this to happen, it just  _ _did__ _,_  I don't know  _ _what__ I was thinking—! I still love you! I always have, always will! But I can't help how I  _ _feel!__ I can't help that I also love Susan!"

At this, Millicent was up and out of her chair, and all too late Edgar saw the scotch bottle in her hand—moments before it came careening into the side of his head. He heard the splitting of the glass, felt it crunch against his temple, spilling the hell-fire of burning into the bleeding gash it left behind, and he was falling. Falling through the black, down, down,  _ _down,__  with nothing to cradle his fall as he reached for his wife to catch him.

The wife that caught him so many times before—the one that tucked him into bed with a loving kiss, that was always behind him with a supportive hand to his back and a loving smile, that worshiped him wholly and completely and adoringly.

He betrayed her absolutely, and now the only thing that caught him was the hard floor as he came out of the suffocating blackness.

" _ _You broke your sacred promise, Edgar.__ " Millicent's murmuring voice came slow and lazy, drawn out in his dizzied state. He sat up on an elbow, momentarily forgetting the situation he was in until his hand found the split in his temple and withdrew.

His hand was doused in red.

When Edgar looked up, Millicent was standing above him, with a still hand on his black 10mm at her side.

"Do- Don't do this," He warbled through oncoming tears. She was crying too, but her face was cold like stone—like their bed had been for the last months—like his home had been—like his heart was for her. He betrayed her long before Susan Lancaster laid her hand over his in the Federalist's Lounge that night years ago.

"I have every  _ _right__ to do this." She responded with the same hollowness that tainted her laugh. How could she sound so—...  _empty_ _ _?__ "I've killed everything you've ever given me... the flowers I couldn't keep alive—the photographs we took together—... I've torn the letters you wrote to me before we were married. Every child you've ever tried to give me is gone, Edgar. I can't keep anything in this life. I don't  _ _want__ to keep anything that reminds me of you... and now?"

Her hand with the gun rose, unflinchingly, pointing down upon him. Edgar didn't have the instinct to run, as he was stuck to the floor, his entire body clamped with fear.

"You're the last thing to go. You're the last thing I can kill, that I can make go away... if only I could do the same with our memories."

Millicent Wellington pulled the trigger, and it sounded louder than she thought it would in their empty home; where on his desk she tore to pieces the photographs they took together and the letters he wrote to her; in their bedroom, his favorite suits were cut to nothing but ribbons and strewn about the room in frenzied decoration; she put her hand to her stomach, shushing her womb that was just as desolate as her heart.

She knelt beside Edgar's corpse on the floor, pressed a chaste kiss against his cheek, and walked bare foot out of their apartment with the gun trained at her side... like a loyal, unmoving hound.

It'd tear into Susan Lancaster, next.

* * *

Millicent didn't know how she found her way to the Cafe Beau Monde without any security seeing her—but being caught and dragged away wasn't something currently on her mind. The moment she heard the swell of Susan Lancaster's obnoxiously bright laughter, she followed it with renewed purpose. The tile in the lobby was cold through the stockings of her bare feet and she could feel eyes on her. Various residents watched her walk through the lobby, in a pendulum back and forth sway with a broken stare, as she staggered on towards the Cafe and no one bothered to stop her. They all saw that something was awfully wrong—but none of them saw the gun in her hand, hidden in the folds of the full skirt of her dress.

She found Susan Lancaster, at last, and her split heart was suddenly gripped with a red, boiling, _ _rage__ upon seeing the resident whore. Hair perfectly curled, make up done with such precise attention it made her plain looks almost exotic, her nails were manicured spectacularly as she cradled her jaw in one upturned palm, and bat her long eyelashes. Under the table she sat at, she had one foot withdrawn from her heels, to slowly glide up Michael Hawthorne's calf, unashamed.

"Now, now, Hawthorne... no need to get so  _ _antsy__ for a drink. It's only 1 in the afternoon! The  _ _real__ fun hasn't started yet!" She swooned.

"A stiff drink isn't the  _ _only__ thing I'm antsy for right now, Susan." The tower's drunkard replied with a sinful grin.

Millicent continued her dull, pendulum-like sway until she was at their table. How many other men was she fucking in the tower? How many of them were committed, married, a father, adored completely by a loving wife?

How many other lives had she ruined by opening her mouth, or spreading her legs, or bending over?

"Susan," She called as she stopped beside the table. Michael was preoccupied with his drink and didn't bother to look up, though Susan looked right at her with a perked eyebrow a minxy curl of her painted lips.

"Ah, Millicent! Are you alright?" She asked with almost mocking concern, her eyes alight with amusement as she looked the other woman up and down. "I hope you don't mind my saying so, but you look like an absolute  _ _wreck.__ What would Edgar think if he came home to a wife that looked like this?"

Millicent  _ _wanted__ the whore to be looking her right in the eyes when she killed her. Without another word more, she revealed the gun at her side and pressed it to the center of Susan's forehead, and clicked her finger on the gun's trigger repeatedly; a barrage of rounds were unleashed right through Susan's skull, splattering the wall behind her, and dripping to the floor, and flecking Millicent, with warm red. Susan's corpse was thrown back against the wall, toppling the chair over with a single leg hooked over it, and her other shoe was flung off her other foot from the force of her body being thrown backward.

Hawthorne was screaming, scrambling to get out of his chair as the other patrons of the Cafe Beau Month went fleeing in a horrid panic, sobbing for security. Millicent stood alone, allowing the now emptied black gun to drop at her side. Susan's blood was slowly seeping towards her bare feet and she let the red consume her toes.

The whore's face was unrecognizable, completely pulverized and blown apart... and Millicent hoped she'd look like that in the afterlife, so no one else would fall for her. Susan Lancaster wouldn't know love again, in this life, or the next.

Millicent was suddenly being twisted away by security forces, wrenching her arms behind her back, hands shoving into her shoulders, pushing and pulling her out of the cafe. Her limpened body went without complaint.

Let them take her away and throw her out into the dirt. Let them stand, and stare, as she put her vulnerable self on display for them all. Tenpenny Tower was nothing but an obelisk of lies that promised complete safety, a lighthouse of detriment that called to it naive souls—but it would now be a graveyard for all. Let her be taken away and thrown out into the wastes, she didn't mind that it would swallow her whole, or that the buzzards and monsters and all the things she once feared would pick off what remained of her infertile carcass.

She hoped every last resident, safely tucked away in Tenpenny's walls, would  _ _rot__ as she would out here.

She hoped that outsider, Claudia, could get the ghouls residency—just to spite them all... just to show them that Allistair Tenpenny couldn't keep them safe from anyone or anything.

As Millicent Wellington was tossed out into the dirt and debris, the front gate drawn shut behind her, she rested on her back and watched the sky. It was the brightest blue she had ever seen... and she wished it didn't bring forth the memories of all the times she remarked to Edgar just how blue his own eyes were.

__Let them all_ _ **_**drown.** _ **

* * *

Claudia Price sat at the front desk of Tenpenny Towers' lobby, as the chair was unoccupied by the security head, Gustavo, for the time being. He was helping another guard drag Millicent Wellington out of the cafe and to the front doors, all the while yelling behind him that someone ensure all the residents were unharmed and accounted for— _ _especially__ Allistair Tenpenny. Claudia watched as she slouched back into her chair with her arms folded over her chest and her boots up on the desk, crossed at the ankle. A cigarette burned away between her lips as the masterpiece she composed played  _ _beautifully__  note upon note upon note in blissful symphony. Everything fell into place so  _ _perfectly__ it was almost too delicious to eat up.

When Millicent happened to look to her as she was pulled past the desk, Claudia saw nothing in her eyes; she looked like she didn't care if she lived the rest of a full life with the consequences of what she had done, or died shortly after out there, killed by all the things she once tried so hard to shelter herself away from.

"Shit—... happened  _just_ like 'ya said it would..." Butch DeLoria murmured in awe from where he sat on the edge of the desk beside her, fiddling with his switchblade. Millicent Wellington was finally hauled outside with the front doors shutting behind her and the guards holding her. "Thought you were just talkin' outta your ass. Are you  _psychic_ or somethin'?"

"Not at all, dumbass," She laughed mirthlessly with a glance to her companion, seeing the widening of his blue eyes and her reflection in them. "You watch people long enough? You find they're all the same... predictable, a fuse needing t'be lit—a charge ready to buckle. All you need t'do is apply the right kind of  _fire_ to get it goin'."

"Would 'ya knock it off? 'Ya get all  _ _creepy__  when you smile like that!" He barked, straightening the collar of his blue vault suit under his black leather jacket. "Look like a fuckin' psychopath..."

Claudia laughed again, with more amusement now than before, and removed her boots propped up on the desk to properly sit up in her seat.

"Who else's on the list?"

"Uh—" Butch took a moment to regard the list made on his Pip-Boy.  _Susan Lancaster, Edgar Wellington II_ ,and  _Millicent Wellington_ were crossed off by him upon opening the note. "The pansy that runs the clothing store, and the Montenegro broad. The one that called 'ya a 'rancid waster bitch' or whatever."

" _Oooh,_ " Claudia cooed excitedly as she took one last drag of her cigarette and smothered it out on the desk uncaringly. " _ _She'll__ be a fun one!"

"Claude, look—I'm all for gettin' your zombie friends in here if it'll keep 'ya from punchin' me in the balls, but do you haf'ta do it like  _this?_ "

" _DeLoria,_ " She purred soothingly—it'd sound like that to anyone that didn't know her, but to Butch DeLoria, it was condescending. As if she were talking to a four year old. "Lancaster was a slaver from Paradise Falls. She's the one Grouse asked me to slap a collar on... and I would've, if he didn't insult me with a shit amount of caps for the work. The slut was hiding in  _Tenpenny Tower_ of all places, I'm not gunna ring up someone behind  _that_ much security... although, collaring her would've been ironic... but I like  _this_ way a lot better!"

"Okay, she was a slaver—but what about the other two?" He had to read the list again to recall their names. "The Wellingtons?"

"Oh, I just didn't like them. Mr. Wellington was an upright bastard and Mrs. Wellington was a fucking condescending cunt from the moment she met me."

"...You sayin' they  _deserved_ it, just 'cause you didn't like them—?"

"One thing you'll find out the longer you live out here,  _Butchie,_  is that if you mouth off to the wrong person—you're gonna get a fist through your teeth or a knife in your gut." Claudia pulled the gloves off from her hands to reveal the black and blue tattoos riddling her knuckles; one hand was scrawled with the name  _James_ and the other with the name  _Cathy._ She pulled for a flask tied to her ankle and offered it to Butch first, but he declined it with a pale face that made his blue eyes even larger. She shrugged and took a heaping sip herself before continuing to speak;

"Everyone in here's an asshole. Well, Dashwood's a cool dude, I guess—so helping Phillips and his friends get in here gave me the incentive I needed to put a boot to these people." She looked to him and gave a playful pout that made him grimace. "Aw, don't give me that puppy look, Butch. It's better than the  _alternative_ Roy offered, wasn't it?"

"Don't give  _me_ that look, like you're all sweet and innocent." He shook his head disapprovingly, and seemed to have a change of mind as he took the flask from her. "That's cold, man...  _real_ cold. The ferals mighta been better."

"Trust me. They're not—and you knew  _ _exactly__ the type of person I was when I asked if 'ya wanted t'run with me." She shot him a sly smirk and he caught it just in time when she leaned in close, looking over the note that he still had pulled up on his Pip-Boy. It reflected blue off her gleaming teeth as she smiled excitedly. "C'mon, Serpent King—how 'bout we talk to that friendly neighborhood  _ _confirmed bachelor__ that you like so much?"

"The faggot tried grabbin' my ass," He scowled and pulled his arm away from her, scooting off the desk to get to his feet.

"Consider it flattery!" Claudia remarked as she gave his behind a firm spank with full palm that made him jump and she walked ahead of him, her hands tucked into the pockets of her Tunnel Snakes jacket. "And I think with that silver tongue of yours,  _ _you__ could convince him t'let the ghouls in... or maybe lettin' him tame your  _Tunnel Snake_ would be enough to get him t'say yes—?" She snickered arrogantly.

"Piss off, tramp stamp! Butch DeLoria's  ** _ **all**_** ladies man!" He exclaimed with an angry red blush spreading in his cheeks.

"Whatever you say. 'Ya let me suck your dick and I  _ _still__ think you're a closet gay."

" _ _Piss.__ ** _ **Off.**_** "

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! And be sure to check out my profile for my other works; this includes more one-shots as well as a multi-chaptered work following a female inventor Lone Wanderer and Butch DeLoria!


End file.
